I almost passed on this one.

Although I thoroughly enjoyed this author’s similar works on John Kennedy and Richard Nixon, there were many reviewers that claimed this book had a heavy liberal bias and was unfair towards Ronald Reagan. That fact shouldn’t surprise anyone when you consider the author is a liberal journalist and Reagan was a staunch conservative. Since biased books aren’t my thing, I was tempted to turn the other way. Fortunately, I chose to ignore my inner ear and read this book. Not only did I thoroughly enjoy it, I also thought it was the best of the Richard Reeves’ Presidents “trilogy”. Yes, the author points out many of Reagan’s faults, but he does acknowledge the good things as well, and sells his audience that Reagan was, indeed, a great communicator.

With a subtitle “The Triumph of Imagination”, one should carefully realize that this moniker can mean more than one thing. When one thinks of “imagination” they might use the word in a highly positive context. Before one can accomplish great things, one must imagine great things. When their imagination becomes a reality, it’s a win-win for all that are involved when results are achieved. However, the word “imagination” can also infer things less kind. Imagination is also a substitute for reality, and when one spends too much time imagining and not enough time doing, there can be consequences. We look at such individuals as living in an alternate reality kin to a fantasy land. Whether or not it was the author’s intentions, he seemed to attribute both of these definitions to Ronald Reagan. Reagan could be an incredible visionary that made many feel great and he reinstalled a state of patriotism throughout the country, but he also seemed more like an actor in a movie reading made-up lines trying to convince a skeptical audience that his fictitious ideas were real.

Like the Kennedy and Nixon books by this author, the style and layout of the narrative focuses on Reagan’s tenure in office as president. We get snippets of life before 1980, but the bulk of this book focuses on all of the major events during his two terms. The great strength of this (and the other two) book(s) by Reeves is that he is a compelling storyteller. He knows how go through the major events of these eight years without boring his readers. We read the good's and the bad's as well as read about the key members of Reagan’s administration. The book seemed to be a perfect length; about 500 pages. Had it been twice as long it would have only been half as good.

We see that Ronald Reagan is brilliant when handling a crowd and talking to reporters during press conferences. I was surprised to read that, early in his administration, he wrote many of his own speeches. In many ways, a leader’s job should be to do just that; lead. The president doesn’t have to be the smartest person in the room nor know the intricacies of the many aspects of government. This is why a president has a Cabinet. It’s impossible to not make comparisons against Reagan’s predecessor, Jimmy Carter. When Carter would be asked a tough question during a press conference, he would often look like a cat that just swallowed a stale mouse and plod his way through an unpleasant, unintelligible answer. Reagan, on the other hand, would shrug his shoulders, tell a funny-one liner, smile, say something along the lines of “aw shucks….” and manage go up five points in the polls overnight.

Of course, there needs to be some substance to go along with that style, and Reeves is clear to point out the bad decisions Reagan made, and the bad advice (whether coming from an insider or an astrologer) Reagan chose to heed. So in addition to a soaring economy, Grenada, and escalating the end of the cold war with Russia, we also read about massive deficits, Beirut, and a heckuva lot of Iran-Contra.

We must then remember that once Reagan became president, he was already and old man. 70 when he entered office, 78 when he left. Although 70 sounds old, 78 sounds a lot older. A lot older. We see the effects of this quite often during the latter years of his administration. We see Reagan confused and frequently falling asleep during cabinet meetings. He didn’t even know where he was at times (‘You’re in the Oval Office, Mr. President…’) It might surprise readers, but this isn’t quite as rare as one might think. Woodrow Wilson was an invalid due to a stroke his last 18 months in office, and FDR was basically at death’s door before his fourth term even began. It’s just that we didn’t have a thing called “television” back then, so these things could be veiled. Although the author doesn’t explicitly state this, it seems Reagan starts falling apart mentally after John Hinkley emptied a gun into him. It’s quite scary to read how serious Reagan’s wounds were, and it seemed touch and go for a while. Since this event happened a mere two months after Reagan takes office, we don’t really have enough information to do a “before and after” comparison. Still, though, judging from what we read, Reagan definitely had much more vitality before the attempted assassination.

Another thing I found interesting while reading this book is how much more cooperative the congress seemed to be then in recent history. Although Reagan was dealing with Democratic majorities, he was able to pass a lot of legislation and there seemed to be a much better spirit of cooperation. Of course, we read about Reagan diligently making phone calls to members of congress whenever there was an important vote, and I would guess the Gipper regularly turned on the charm. Again, this is something that Jimmy Carter could not (nor would not) do. I also found it a bit of an eyebrow raiser to find that many well-known Republicans turned against him after successful negotiations on nuclear disarmament and a reduction in weapons production in 1988 with the USSR. One scathing conservative accused the president’s accomplishments of nothing more than “Liberal Detente”.

So the majority loved the man, the far left hated him, and the author does a brilliant job throughout his book telling us why. I’ll say it again, I didn’t think this book was biased in the least. I thought it was a very fair treatment. In fact, had the author been a strong conservative instead of a strong liberal, I could feasibly see the exact same finished product.

For me, this is a trait of an excellent book.

Odd in that the author at the outset says that Ronald Reagan was not the detached, lazy, stage-managed script reader that some people think he is, before providing 400 pages of examples of RR's detachment, laziness, and script reading. Otherwise, a pretty good trip down memory lane, reminding us of Reagan's stellar supporting actors while on the national political stage. If you had to list the top 10 villains in American history, two - Alexander Haig and Oliver North - were active in the Reagan administration.

A solid look at the Reagan years. Not terribly in-depth. I mean the re-election campaign feels like it's covered in a paragraph. But there's lots of nice behind the scenes info here you may not have heard about before.

Joelle Reads Her Bookcase #63

This is an excellent overview of Reagan's economic policies, the Iran-contra affair, and his determination to defeat communism. It also addresses his memory and faculty issues. However, it completely sidesteps the War on Drugs, and his attitudes towards welfare and rampant racism of minorities.

In the first major biography published after Reagan's death, Richard Reeves sticks to the same modus operandi used in his earlier biographies of Kennedy (President Kennedy: Profile of Power) and Nixon (President Nixon: Alone in the White House). Eschewing traditional biography, Reeves endeavors to understand his subjects through a close examination of how their administrations functioned on a day-to-day basis. It's a microscopic approach that provokes irritation (and yawns) from some corners. But with over 900 books about Reagan on the shelves, that most critics find something of value in President Reagan attests to Reeves's accomplishment. Of course, any book about a divisive figure yields its share of reviews based on ideology instead of critical theory. President Reagan is no exception, but where objectivity prevails, reviews are generally positive.

This is an excerpt from a review published in Bookmarks magazine.

The buck stops here: I take full responsibility for my disappointment in this book, having been misinformed by my expectations. I really enjoyed the Richard Reeves bio of Kennedy (President Kennedy: Profile of Power), giving it 5 out of 5 stars. I was hoping for more of the same, but what started as a fly-on-the-wall behind-the-scenes look at a presidency in action morphed into an examination of Reagan's reflection as it appeared in the mirror of the news media.

For example, Gorbechev was named Time Magazine's Man of the year…

But the Fashion Foundation of America named Reagan to its “Best Dressed” list for the fourth straight year, and dropped Gorbachev because he wore a business suit rather than a tuxedo to the formal White House dinner to celebrate the signing of the INF Treaty.

In fact, the very last sentence of the book is

“God, this is impressive,” said Steven Weisman, a New York Times White House correspondent during the Reagan years [commenting on his funeral]. “But the man they’re talking about is not the President I covered every day.”

There was also a lot more editorial snarkiness in Reeves' narrative this time than I recall in the Kennedy book. For example:

President Daniel Ortega and Defense Minister Humberto Ortega sounded more like the Marx Brothers than Marxists…

Or

He [Reagan] had connected Americans with a common political language—dumbing down politics in his way…

Written like a true Politico-Media Establishment elitist.

In fact, I think I may have come away with greater insight into those who collect salaries as paid observers of and commentators on politics than I did about Ronald Reagan. The book is littered with observations similar to Steven Weisman's, like:

David Stockman was cruel and specific in his reminiscences, helping create the image of a befuddled old man who came alive only when the curtain opened and the lights brightened.

It gives me pause that journalists and politicians may be afflicted with the same cognitive dissonance as movie and TV fans who might struggle with the fact that Matt Damon is not really Jason Bourne or that Martin Sheen was never really President.

Reagan was, after all, an actor…and, really, aren't we all?

This was a pretty good read about President Reagan's presidency, the good and the bad. He had an amazing 8 years in the White House as I assume that every president does. I felt it was a pretty fair assessment of his 8 years in office.

Richard Reeves, at least according to his wikipedia page, is irritated when people call him an elitist liberal [1]. The friend of mine who gave me this book, of course, is quite fond of liberal writers [2], and yet the fact that Reeves is an admittedly biased person makes a big difference in this book because the author is praised on the cover by a blurb from the New York Times that says that the book is scrupulously fair, which it is not. In fact, reading this book in light of the Obama presidency is a rather jarring experience, in that the very same things that Reeves critiques Reagan most harshly for--his focus on rhetoric and vision while beings somewhat cold and remote towards others, his desire to present himself as a candidate of hope and change and optimism in a cynical world, his tolerance of high budget deficits on a historic level, and the way that his cabinet officials engaged in illegal behavior involving arms trading and illegal e-mail servers [3]--are precisely those areas where a conservative of an opposite bias to the author's would excoriate Obama for, with at least equal fairness to the author. This book is not scrupulously fair; rather, it represents the efforts of an openly avowed left-wing thinker to seek to capture what was most noteworthy about President Reagan in the attempt that such rhetorical skill and success with the masses could be repeated by a suitable leftist candidate.

While it is fairly unsurprising that the contents of this book would reek with leftist bias, so much so that it is not even worthwhile to begin to document such matters with any kind of detail, given the extent to which the author seeks to use every primary source possible about the president and subject it to the most tortured and liberal interpretation possible, the bias of the author is even more notable in the structure of the book itself, which is worthy of comment. Ostensibly, the book consists of 23 days of the Reagan presidency, more than half of which are chosen in the second term, where a president can be more safely viewed as ineffective and irrelevant due to the lame duck effect. Even more than this, though, the dates are somewhat arbitrary, in that even though they represent some sort of turning point or important event, like President Reagan being shot, or election day, or various important meetings between Reagan and Gorbachev, or the day that Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork lamentably got borked, the author feels entirely free to ramble on like a senile elderly writer in need of focus about whatever strikes his fancy, even as he continually needles Reagan on being senile himself. Pot, meet kettle. That happens a lot in this book, to an irritating degree that makes it far less worthwhile as a source, and far less pleasant to read for anyone who is not drinking the same kool-aid as the author.

So, ultimately, what is one to make of this bloated book that weighs in at 490 turgid pages of biased reportage? For those on the left side of the political spectrum, this is the sort of work to read as a way of insulting the American populace for electing and then re-electing Reagan over Carter and Mondale, while pretending that this sort of work is scrupulously fair and even-handed in its approach. Even so, for those who do not find anything useful or worthwhile in the author's bias, this book is still noteworthy in that it provides an opportunity to remind oneself that it is not a good thing to idolize any political leader or place them on a pedestal. The author wisely notes towards the close of the book that the office of the presidency is more than anyone can bear on their own, and that those who serve the president, any president, need to avoid doing anything that brings discredit to someone who holds that noble office. The advice is wise advice, even coming from a disreputable source. Those who seek to defend the legitimacy of authority have a responsibility to act in such a way as to bring glory and credit and honor to those above them. We ignore the need to build others up at our peril, and is this book is largely a waste of good paper, it is not entirely without value, despite its authors best efforts.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard...

[2] See, for example:

https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress...

https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress...

[3] https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress...

Interesting perspective on one of the modern day's larger than life figures. I'm still conflicted on what I think of the Reagan presidency, which reached new heights in terms of easing Cold War tensions while at the same time sinking to new depths of government corruption and deficit spending. Certainly, a number of the issues that we're currently dealing with as a country were heavily influenced by decisions made, for better or worse, during Reagan's time in the Oval Office, and looking back on those decisions provides greater understanding to the modern world. I really enjoyed Reeves's writing style which, though it got bogged down at times in listing off perspectives of contemporary media commentators, flowed well for the most part and kept the reader engaged from cover to cover.

The author starts off with stating that when he met Reagan he was not impressed. I left off on disc 16 out of 20. This book was written by a very liberal author. If Mr. Reeves is still alive I hope it writes an equally damning, if not more so, book about Obama. This book was very disappointing.

A slanted perspective on President Reagan with a transparent agenda. At least the author discloses his dislike for Reagan up front.

I have enjoyably read several presidential biographies that were much longer and much more compelling than this 490-page tome. This one felt like a chore to get through.

Along the way, there was a lot of well-sourced information about Reagan's presidency; much of it was eye-opening, but in a way that I realized all presidencies have their fair share of turmoil and conflict. Reagan's had quite a lot of illegal junk going on, which we did hear about at the time, but not nearly as much as we thought was happening. Having lived through the Reagan years, it was interesting reading the behind-the-scenes of events I knew of.

I also did enjoy many of the personal exchanges that happened out of the camera's recorder. However, many times the flow of the narrative jumped all over the place. Footnotes, when they came, were notated with an asterisk at the end of a long paragraph, so that when you read the footnote, it referred back to something at the beginning of that paragraph that was light years away from what you'd just finished reading about. Confusing to say the least. At times I had to stop and go back to figure out who a pronoun was referring to, as the narrative had lost me again.

Having said all this, I am glad I read this book, as I was looking for something a bit more neutral than all glowing praise. I thought Reeves provided a number of occasions where he shared from pundits at the time both in favor of and in criticism of the president. Overall, however, I think there was a more critical tone than supportive.